Each of the following statements contributes to an idea of universal salvation — meaning all men are saved regardless of their religious professions — which would contradict the most important aspects of Catholic theology if true:

“In the Holy Spirit, every individual and all people have become, through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, children of God, partakers in the divine nature and heirs to eternal life.” (p. 3)

“Jesus Christ makes us sharers in what He is. Through His Incarnation, the Son of God in a certain manner united Himself with every human being. In our inmost being He has recreated us; in our inmost being He has reconciled us with God, reconciled us without ourselves, reconciled us with our brothers and sisters: He is our Peace.” (p. 5)

“[T]he Church believes that human dignity is based on the fact that God has created each person, that we have been redeemed by Christ, and that, according to the Divine Plan, we shall rejoice with God forever.” (p. 6)

“In the name of the solidarity that binds us all together in a common humanity, I again proclaim the dignity of every human person: the rich man and Lazarus are both human beings, both of them equally created in the image and likeness of God, both of them equally redeemed by Christ.” (p. 7)

“Each one is included in the mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has united Himself for ever through this mystery.” (p. 8)

“This is man in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ, the mystery in which each one of the four thousand million human beings living on our planet has become a sharer from the moment he is conceived.” (pp. 8-9)

“The persons whose names are contained in [The Book of the Dead of Auschwitz] were incinerated, they underwent tortures and were finally deprived of life solely, in most cases, because they belonged to a certain nation rather than another . . . In the light of faith, we see that this witness of heroic fidelity to their ethnic identity became the Holocaust which united them to God in eternity, and a seed of peace for future generations.” (p. 10)

“[E]ternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it.” (p. 25)

If the entire religion is nonsense, why would we care about Communion for non-Catholics or blessings of civil unions? As such, the heresies related to universal salvation appear to be Francis’s most dangerous heresies.

These statements teach universal salvation and the corresponding possibility that hell is empty. If they were true, they would fundamentally undermine the entirety of Catholic teaching because they contradict so many aspects of the Deposit of Faith that any rational person would have to conclude that the religion is a man-made farce rather than God’s Divine Truth. Indeed, the following conclusions follow inexorably from these heresies:

• Because Redemption is applied to all men in a way that they cannot lose it, everything that the Church has always taught about salvation and sanctifying grace is completely wrong.
• Because the Church bases its teachings on the clear words of Jesus in the New Testament, the New Testament must be mistaken about the most important aspects of our religion.
• If all men are saved regardless of their religious beliefs and moral practices, then everything the Church teaches about moral theology is completely wrong.
• Because the Church is wrong on all of this, it is not a source of God’s truth but a source of psychologically damaging lies.
• As such, there is no reasonable basis to believe the Catholic Faith.

If the entire religion is nonsense, why would we care about Communion for non-Catholics or blessings of civil unions? As such, the heresies related to universal salvation appear to be Francis’s most dangerous heresies.

Interestingly, though, each of the page numbers referenced above are from Fr. Patrick de La Rocque’s Pope John Paul II: Doubts About a Beatification. These heretical statements were made by the man who made Bergoglio a cardinal — “Saint John Paul II the Great” — rather than Francis.

Fr. Patrick de La Rocque provided the following background and summary for his discussion of John Paul II’s heresies regarding universal salvation:

“It was well known that we owe the formula from Gaudium et Spes to Karol Wojtyla: ‘By His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man.’ Left in its vague sense by the conciliar document, this expression found a more precise interpretation in the writings of John Paul II. His teaching, indeed, contains three recurring affirmations: 1) The Redemption is applied to all men; in other words, to each of them in particular; 2) Redemption is applied in such a way that he cannot lose it; 3) Redemption is applied to everyone from the moment of conception.” (p. 2)

We can see all of this in the statements quoted above, and have seen echoes of it throughout Francis’s occupation of the papacy. This explains why Francis defends almost any set of religious beliefs in the world but viciously attacks the unadulterated Catholic Faith, which insists on teaching that the Church is the sole Ark of Salvation. So Francis’s most dangerous heresies are actually those he inherited from the man so many faithful Catholics still revere, the man who gave us the infamous Prayer Meeting at Assisi. Yes, many faithful Catholics understandably have a more visceral repulsion for Francis, but that is generally because the man is so flagrantly hostile to Catholicism, whereas John Paul II persuaded many that he was a truly faithful pope.

Yes, the Council was continuous with what the Church taught before the Council in the same way that a car’s path before and after a u-turn is continuous. Continuity, as it turns out, is far less important in matters of the Faith than consistency and conformity with God’s immutable truth.

Why does this matter today? It matters because so many good Catholics who clamor for the removal of Francis — whether they consider him the worst pope ever or an anti-pope — would be quite content with a return to the “happy days” of John Paul II. And if not John Paul II, at least Benedict XVI, who had this to say about the man he canonized:

“My personal mission is not to issue many new documents, but to ensure that [the] documents [by John Paul II] are assimilated, because they are a rich treasure, they are the authentic interpretation of Vatican II. We know that the Pope was a man of the Council, that he internalized the spirit and word of the Council. Through these writings he helps us understand what the Council wanted and what it didn’t.” (Pope John Paul II: Doubts About a Beatification)

Surely Benedict XVI made some efforts to accommodate Traditional Catholics . . . but here he is praising John Paul II’s interpretation of Vatican II. How does this square with the notion that Benedict XVI believed that the Council was “continuous” with everything the Church had always taught? The following assessment of the Council from then-Cardinal Ratzinger can help us bridge the gap:

“If one seeks a global synthesis of the text (Gaudium et Spes) it could be said that it is a revision of Pius XI’s Syllabus, a kind of anti-Syllabus . . . We note that the text [GS] plays the part of a counter-Syllabus insofar as it represents an attempt for an official reconciliation of the Church with the world as it had become since 1789.”

Yes, the Council was continuous with what the Church taught before the Council in the same way that a car’s path before and after a u-turn is continuous. For that matter, Judas’s days as a faithful Apostle were continuous with his time as the man who betrayed Christ. Continuity, as it turns out, is far less important in matters of the Faith than consistency and conformity with God’s immutable truth.

By all means, we can think of Francis as the worst pope ever (or an anti-pope if one cannot think of him as a pope) but those considerations about what to call him pale in comparison to a bigger question: how do we expunge all of the lethal heresies that have proliferated freely since before any of us had heard of Bergoglio?

First things first: we need to get our theology correct before we can begin to expect that God will grant us a holy pope (or at least rid us of Francis). This is not too difficult because the pre-Vatican II theology has been confirmed by the horrors that followed from abandoning it. No creativity is required — or even really useful — if we want to restore proper Catholic theology: we simply need to insist on truth and reject error, including those from “Saint John Paul II the Great” and Vatican II. Once we do that, perhaps we can more worthily petition God’s mercy to resolve the crisis of the papacy. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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